Exploration
Meet the storm chaser who drove into a tornado and survived
Ronan Nagle drove straight into a tornado so that his cameraman could capture one of the most stunning IMAX movie moments ever recorded. Here's his story.
Film producer Ronan P Nagle and IMAX cameraman Sean Casey were buddies at film school together in the mid-1990s when Casey came up with an insane idea: to drive into a tornado and film it from the inside.
When Casey called Nagle to invite him along, he jumped at the chance – and they spent the next 10 years chasing storms in their specially-constructed Tornado Intercept Vehicle, the TIV, as season after season they missed out on the shot they wanted.
But then, finally, in 2009: bang! They scored a direct hit.
The shot was the climax of the movie Tornado Alley and one of the biggest moments in the Stormchasers TV series – and Nagle was not only the producer of both but also the man behind the wheel. Now that modern technology's moved on so much that capturing a 360-degree VR experience inside a tornado is no longer an impossible dream, could he be tempted back into the field?
Why did you first go storm chasing, Ronan?
Sean Casey [Nagle's cameraman] and I weren’t scientists and we didn’t know about weather, we just wanted to capture the beauty of tornadoes. They’re the most beautiful weather you can film, so elusive, super violent and really picturesque, that long elephant trunk ripping through a field. But what started out all about filming ended up becoming this giant adventure.
I got hooked. I loved the lifestyle, the fear and the nail-biting adrenaline. It’s not non-stop – there’s lots of waiting around for a storm to hit – but when it does it’s so intense you’ve got to have your stuff together. I like living on the edge. I volunteer now at a firehouse, I’m a firefighter and an emergency medical technician. I also drive an ambulance. That’s how I get my thrill nowadays because I don’t chase any more.
Ronan P. Nagle is a storm chasing legend
© Will Gray
Even so, driving into a tornado doesn’t seem to be a very sensible idea.
I mean, yes, it’s pretty intense. I personally drove into about 10 tornadoes – but I got a lot of flak because I was way too mellow about it. The TIV [Tornado Intercept Vehicle] was designed to be driven into the path of a tornado and had spikes and flaps that came down to anchor it in place to get ready for impact.
The idea was to get in position and have time to deploy all that. Sean always said, "We have one opportunity a season, don’t screw it up." But so often we were chasing it down and driving as the thing’s passing over the top of us. Getting in position is the name of the game and we never wanted to give up on it. We were willing to push the boundaries as far as we could.
It may look odd but the Tornado Intercept Vehicle is built for purpose
© Will Gray
How did you feel the first time you tried to drive inside one?
I’d say probably the single scariest moment of my life was the first time I felt we were going to intercept. I remember putting pedal to the metal, and my knee and leg were violently shaking. There were also times we’d intercept at night, and those are some of the scariest moments because you can’t see what’s going on. But after that first time, I got into the mode of going into the intercept and not really thinking about what was going on until afterwards. That’s how you get through.
The clouds darken and the TIV races into action
© Will Gray
Where was your best intercept?
It was in Goshen, Wyoming, when we were on a storm working with a giant scientific team, the largest scientific project ever undertaken in field research for severe weather. There were more radars looking at that storm than anything else ever. To get ‘the shot’ we always wanted an open field with ideally an abandoned barn where nobody gets hurt. On that day, we were on the road, had a clear shot of the tornado, wide open field, tornado coming at us, and we were actually able to fully deploy and get the camera up right into the turret to film the tornado as it hit us.
And how did it feel to get the shot?
It was huge for us because it took 10 chase seasons to finally get that shot. We got amazing footage along the way, but we should have had 10 great intercept shots, one a season, but it was much harder than we thought. The one we got wasn’t an all-amazing super elephant trunk but it was a really clear shot and it was hugely satisfying because we knew, in that moment, that we finally had a movie.
The thrill was mixed with relief, though, because we’d had a very lucky escape – Sean had repositioned us at the last moment and If we’d stayed where we were, a set of power lines would have landed right on top of us.
A tornado rages in the background as Nagle makes his way to it
© Stormchasers
So, pretty dangerous then?
Stupid as it sounds, we were actually as safe as we could possibly be. The TIV was a safe place to be. It was once tested by sticking it behind a jet engine cranked up to 440kph and it didn’t move. We had radar trucks reporting to us with a full picture of what the storm was doing.
What was the fastest wind speed you were in?
In the Goshen one, the instrument on the TIV recorded speeds up to 210kph before it was ripped off. That’s not a bomb burner of a tornado, but for something you’re going to drive into, you don’t want to get too much higher. Sean once had an intercept of 280kph. Pretty epic.
To storm chase you also need a radar truck!
© Will Gray
Those kinds of winds can create huge destruction – what kind of devastation did you see?
The storm chasing mentality is that you don’t want to see people get hurt, but you want to be there to witness the power and beauty of this amazing nature. Driving into these things, we often ended up being first responders, going into people's homes after a tornado had gone through and finding people covered in debris and trying to support them.
I remember once, I wasn’t in the TIV, I was driving an ordinary truck and it was during the night, which is never ideal. A tornado developed right over us so I backed the truck into the winds to avoid being broadsided and we watched it go north-east, pick up a modular home and explode it into bits.
We drove up immediately, you could smell gas, power lines were down and we found an elderly lady sitting there, the main rafter of the house fallen just behind her back. She was covered in debris, but she survived. That was very intense, probably one of the most terrifying rescue moments I’ve had.
1 min
A supercell storm, up close
A supercell storm, up close in this time-lapse video.
You shot IMAX and reality TV show Stormchasers at the same time. What did it take to film the show?
Filming Tornado Alley was not easy. You have to chase two months of the year and a tornado is a very elusive cast member so it takes a lot of time to find one, let alone intercept it, let alone film it well. Every day you’re moving towards the storm but also looking at where the next day is going to play out.
If you position yourself 1,000km from where the next day’s storm is due to be, you’re going to have to cover that distance the next day to get there. At our peak, for Stormchasers, we had five different crews, hotels for two months, cars and fuel. It was a really expensive show to make because you need to put yourself at the right place at the right time.
Shooting with the IMAX camera
© Will Gray
How has tornado chasing changed in the last decade?
In the early days, you had to call back to someone who was watching the weather data to know how to get into the right place. But with wifi and constant mobile internet, storm chasers can now adjust on the fly, so the whole world of storm chasing has evolved into much more of a military precision exercise, you can duck and weave and react to the storms. Having digital video cameras, compact cameras and small Go-Pros has also made it a lot easier to film and cover multiple angles at one time and to share them super quick.
There used to be a weather channel truck following around chasers and the first guy to the place would sell their footage, and you’re talking $10,000. It doesn’t happen like that any more. But because of that too, you have loads of chasers out there now, lots of people with dashcams and cameras. So it’s becoming easier to achieve some really good footage – you just have to be good at interpreting the data.
Inside the TIV with all its gadgets and gizmos
© Will Gray
Would you chase again?
I'm sure I will, maybe just for fun, though, as we really knocked it out of the park, so I’m not sure about making another movie. But now there’s 360-degree immersion filming. A virtual-reality experience of being inside the tornado – is that the next big shot? Yes, for sure. And I’m sure people are trying that. We would joke about that back in the day, but now that is a total reality. But to really get inside a tornado, you’d have to do it with the TIV because you’d need to be protected. The TIV is still around, too. So, if someone’s not working on it…